Potter's Evidence
by tearsofphoenix
Summary: Third and last companion piece of my dreamed end.


**Potter's ****Evidence**

By tearsofphoenix 

Standard Disclaimer applies - it's all JKR's.

_Many thanks to all those that reviewed my last works__; I__ hope that in the meanwhile my replies have arrived!_

_And again grateful, big thanks to Whitehound, who revised my first story __after submission__, and since then has kindly __always given__ a necessary help with the language._

_After a long period __spent__ reading essays, editorials __and__ fan fictions, that __accompanied__ me, __along with many others__, in the hard time between the end of HBP and the publishing of DH, these last weeks I've felt the pressure to be a more active part of this wonderful group of people that so strongly loves Professor Severus Snape, __that "gift__ of character" as his creator __once said_

_So here is another piece that completes the story told in my other two recent fan __fictions_

_Because, as an insightful reviewer of my second story said, at the end all will be between Snape and Harry. Yes, they share__ the main role in equal measure__, since the beginning, if __anyone__ hasn't noticed ;-) _

_Why, haven't you __noticed__ that __even__ before the title of book six (__which__ is formed half by Harry's name and half by that of Severus, obviously), the acronym HP & SS (or HP & PS – read Professor for P) was already a big spotlight?_

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

"_Strange how short-sighted being invisible can make you_"

Strange how those words, said to him by Dumbledore in his first year at Hogwarts, were printed in his head as if written with indelible ink, _now_.

Stranger how he had so easily forgotten them, _before_. And the more strange was the fact that on some previous occasions he had found the hard way that that sentence spoke the truth.

"_The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution_." Again he seemed to be listening to Dumbledore's voice in his head, in its calmest and most serious tone.

He wouldn't have paid attention to whoever had tried to question his truth, _until now_, because he had witnessed everything on that fateful night on the Astronomy Tower. With a very short sight, it seemed now, but how could it have been longer?

If only he had known everything from the beginning! But life, like a well-written mystery, doesn't explain everything to you in the first pages, life is not like a simple book of instructions… life is more surprising and exciting than that, if you could bear your own burden of excitement till the end…

So the unbelievable events which had happened in the last few hours were dancing in his head, while walking hurriedly towards the hospital wing.

"_Finite incantatem!" _had been the words that had made him now able to tell everyone the truest truth about the story, and of course the spell had been spoken by the wisest in his little personal trinity… lucky days those had been, when Trevor was lost on the train and a troll got into a bathroom, he sighed.

Until that moment he had been, for the third and hopefully last time, in a full body-bind under his magical cloak, almost entirely covered by it. This time, however, fury hadn't been his feeling when he had been released from Petrificus Totalus.

It couldn't have been.

He had thought he had reached the deepest degree of shame toward the wizard in front of him in his fifth year, after the last private lesson received from that professor.

And after that abyss, in the last vestiges of immaturity of his now-finished youth, during the months that had followed, he had climbed again the mountain of hate and disgust that had always ruled their link, only to... fall dizzily from that peak, today, without bruises or broken bones though, thanks to the object of his current shame, who for the last and most important time had done his best to save his life.

Under the spell Harry had listened to his words:

"Now you will listen to me, for once in your life, Potter!" had been his first statement, but the exclamation mark in his voice hadn't been coloured with the customary imperative tone. It had more been the sound of an exhausted man, arrived at the point of no return in his exasperation.

Then Professor Snape had explained everything to him: why he had been forced to kill the Headmaster, his role in the whole matter of the prophecy, what had really happened on the Astronomy Tower that night and how he had helped him until that day, sending all those hints to find the horcruxes, through Fawkes, that had reached him after the flight from the castle.

Yes, Fawkes, inherited from Albus like a will's gift from a father to a son, was one of the evidences that Harry wasn't the only one to be truly Dumbledore's man.

The Order had received the messages with faith, believing that Albus, in his powerful magic, had found a way to help them all after his death, too. No one could have thought that the sender was a living wizard, and that they came from Dumbledore's murderer. And it had been easy for Harry to fall into Snape's trap, because when the phoenix had given him a message that had asked him to go, alone, to THAT cave, he hadn't a thought of anybody other than the spirit of Dumbledore helping him in the last task of his quest.

But there he had found Snape, though, and so it was Snape who was to lead Harry to the last act of the story, the final confrontation with the wizard incarnating all the evil of their world.

A tear had slipped from the green eyes, he had hoped Snape had seen it, and read, through that little part of him expelled from his body unaffected by the spell, that he had understood: his burden, the heavy responsibility of being the Chosen One, had quite vanished compared with the long suffering and all the dangers, the humiliations, the terrible forced actions the man in front of him had endured.

And, more than the words which he had finally heeded - words so explanatory, said in Snape's precise and biting manner, so different from the tone that had marked those said by Dumbledore after Sirius' death but therefore so much more honest and believable – it had been what he had seen that had won his trust: through those black eyes, and through the way his thin lips seemed to utter all, with no more sneering, but almost quivering when he had been forced to say the name of the wizard that had been the only true master of his life, Harry had known the truth.

He still didn't know if his living former nemesis had seen or understood his understanding. Right in that moment, like a tide, two people had entered the cave: luckily it hadn't been the more impetuous of the duo who entered first.

"_Stupefy"_ had been the hex, and after she had cast it on Snape, Hermione had released Harry from the body-bind.

After that all had been frantic: his explanations to his friends, - both astonished, one dangerously on the verge of tears through her wide eyes - and the Rennervate of their former professor, their plans for the last battle…

And the victory, finally!

Carrying on a conjured stretcher the inanimate body of Severus Snape, severely injured after all the hexes he had received shielding the Boy Who Had Triumphed during the last battle, Harry, now, was praying to whatever divinity would listen his plea: that it wasn't too late, that Snape would survive. Because after having learned the facts about this wizard, a man that had never received from anyone an ounce of the gratitude he deserved, he knew the truth.

And the truth was that Snape had to live, or else the victory meant less than nothing to Harry – of all people! -

Because the power that had won against evil couldn't fail in the most important goal: his second chance of a life worth living, a chance that only the true power of love can give.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

_**A/N:**__ this is the last part of a trilogy that tells how I hope the series will end (and for __those who__ are worried about the open ending of this story, my answer is in the first of these fan __fictions__, "An Alternative Epilogue")._

_I can guess that it will be very difficult for Snape to __get Harry to stand in front of him and listen__… And no, of course I'm not able to find more explanations than these… That's why I didn't dare to write the very words with which Snape will be able to move Harry… this is beyond what I can do whatever dream I'm dreaming. _

_But of one thing I'm sure: JKR will do it, she has to._

_And of course Harry's plea is mine, too._

_The__ lines in italics, at the beginning, are borrowed __from__ the books._

_The stretcher – at least! – conjured by Harry for Snape is another not so hidden little tribute to a __view__ of the events __which__ happened at the end of POA that Whitehound and Duj explained in their stories: every time I read it, it makes me shiver about the way Snape was treated there. _


End file.
